Sabaideeeee Laos

Laos would have to be one of the most laid-back countries on earth. Exemplifying this, was our first stop, Don Det, a tiny Mekong island in the 4000 islands of Southern Laos. You know that when you have to physically wake restaurant owners up to make your lunch at 2pm, you've entered a whole new realm of relaxation. At breakfast, lunch and dinner, this was a regular occurrence in Don Det. You also know, that when you spend 4 days solid lying in a hammock, you've quickly adapted to this lifestyle and have entered a whole new realm of laziness. Aside from one afternoon bike ride, (which required more energy than is the norm on Don Det) the most physical activity we exerted was a lazy stroll to the bakery to buy cakes and getting up from our hammocks to watch mama (our crazy guest home owner) drown pigs on the island opposite us. With the only electricity available being run from a generator between 7pm - 11pm, this kind of relaxation is what Don Det was made for.

Mama's guest house - the hammocks that became our home for 4 days

Mekong sunset

In fear of having criss-cross hammock marks permanently indented in our backs, we voted ourselves off the island. On the main land, we got a bus to Champasak ...well, that's what we paid for anyway. But given we were the only ones on the packed bus getting off at Champasak, a decision was made (unbeknown to us) to drop us off in the middle of the turn off. Great. We tried to bribe a mini bus driver (with a nice shiny can of insect repellent) to take us into town. When this didn't work, we forked over a dollar and he gave us a lift. Twenty minutes later, after trying to pin point our location on the Champasak map, we were informed that we weren't actually in Champasak. Again, great. To get to Champasak, we had to cross the Mekong (information that may have been useful earlier). We hopped onto a local bus (by bus we mean pick-up truck!) and drove onto a rickety raft to cross the river. This detour, although initially a little annoying, proved to be awesome fun ....perhaps more fun than Champasak itself ...actually, definitely more fun.

The raft used to cross the river

It makes sense that Champasak isn't on the Laos tourist trail, because aside from a pretty temple, some wacky Japanese students, and a nice Qantas pilot, there's very little to do...oh, except kill giant spiders in our bathroom.

Spider in our bathroom... YUK!

Wat Phu - Champasak

While we're on the topic of places to skip in Laos, add Savannaket to the list (this is, however, where the list ends) ...In hindsight, we don't even know why we went there. ..all we did was spend hours on the internet and gaze longingly at the action-packed town across the Mekong ...which turned out to be a town in Thailand.

Perhaps Vientiane, the capital of Laos, would hold a little more action for us. ...ummm ...not so much, but we did get to visit the worst nightclub in Asia (and Asia has some pretty bad clubs). Neither of us are big clubbers, but when every bar in the city closes by 11pm, a beer in Vientiane's only nightclub (in Laos' tallest building ...a huge 14 stories) is hard to pass up. Surrounded by prostitutes and dodgy old men, we entertained ourselves with the latter - in the form of Korean business men who were amazed that 2 white girls could speak some Korean.

Our next stop, Vang Vieng, has earned itself it's own blog posting (we'll be putting that up soon), so we'll skip onto Luang Prabang.

We're starting to realise that we have some seriously bad bus karma. The road from central to Northern Laos is long and winding due to a billion mountains in the way. The scenery along the way was breathtaking, but, so was the smell of the bus. First of all, the on-board toilet was leaking, but half way up the first (of many) mountains, the smell of vomit began to overpower the smell of urine. You'd think your senses would eventually adapt to the smell, but they don't, and when the man sitting in front of us somehow managed to throw up on Claire's leg while he was asleep, all we could do was laugh - a lot ...and then move seats. Surely, that's enough bad luck for one day!? Nope. Collecting our bags from under the bus, Amy noticed hers was a little damp ...actually it was soaked in what turned out to be chicken juices from the baskets of live and not so alive chickens that had been sitting on her bag. The pair of us smelled rank and we pitied the poor soul at our guest house who washed our vomit pants and chicken bag and clothes.

From our rocky start in Luang Prabang, things started looking up as we wondered around the charming town, it's excellent night market and it's delicious and cheap food stalls. Pretty much everyone we'd met on our trip in Laos, was in Luang Prabang at the same time, giving us playmates for late night bowling, an "orange" party (with free orange t-shirts!) and beers at the night-food market.

Luang Prabang and it's surroundings are gorgeous and there's no shortage of things to fill your days with - beautiful waterfalls, traditional Lao massage, monasteries and temples galore - we did it all - including getting up before dawn to watch the hundreds of local monks collecting alms.

Kouang Si Waterfall - Luang Prabang

Views of Luang Prabang from Phu Si

Monks collecting alms

Orange party free t-shirts = love

We were a little shocked at our bowling skills

From uber relaxation to buckets of fun, Laos has it all - picturesque scenery, fascinating culture and friendly people (both locals and tourists alike), our month there passed so quickly and, once again, we fell in love with a country and were very sad to leave...we might even miss those Mekong sunsets.

Next destination, Nepal. Stay tuned for updates on our penultimate stop before home...but not before you read about our tubing adventure in Vang Vieng - if the Lao Lao buckets haven't erased the awesomeness of it all from our memories, that is.